Robin White

Dame Robin Adair White (Ngāti Awa) was born in Te Puke in 1947 and completed her Diploma at Elam School of Fine Arts in 1967. At art school, White was taught by New Zealand artist Colin McCahon — Anne McCahon's husband. By the early 1970s, White was establishing herself as a leading New Zealand artist in her own right.

After one year at Teachers Training College in the late 60s, she moved to Paremata, Porirua and worked as an art teacher at Mana College. To make her art more accessible, White taught herself printmaking, which has since become a defining characteristic of her practice. In these early years she also developed her personal Regionalist style. This is a movement where artists focused on interpreting their local landscapes – and the buildings and people in them — with simplified forms, bold lines and bright colours. 

Around 1972, White moved to Portobello on the Otago Peninsula and pursued a full-time career as an artist. Since then, she has continued to stay true to the environments she has lived in, and her style has shifted several times to reflect this. Most notable was her family’s move to Kiribati in 1982, and a fire in 1996 where they lost all their possessions. This encouraged her to collaborate with other woman art practitioners across Te Moana Nui a Kiwa (the Pacific) in customary art forms including tapa and masi. 

White has received accolades including Queen’s birthday honours (2003), Dame Companion of the order of Merit (2009) and the New Zealand Arts Icon award (2022). Her major survey and publication ‘Something is Happening Here’, codeveloped by Te Papa and Auckland Art Gallery (2022), also toured to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

The first 2 ‘School Journal’ illustrations represented here were made in 1970, while White was teaching. They depict buildings in the outer commercial area of what was then the newly established Porirua City. She later turned this design into a screen print.

The series of images of the boatsheds were created to accompany a story written by her friend, poet Sam Hunt called ‘May Holidays on Bottle Creek’ (‘School Journal’, Part 2, Number 3, 1972). The illustrations would have been created when White was living in Paramata at ‘Bottle Creek' as it was known by White and her friends living there. The figure standing in front of the building is believed to be Sam Hunt who also lived there at the time.

The series of illustrations of the seals were created for a story called ‘Watching the Seals’ [School Journal, Part 2, Number 1,1972.]. White recalls going to Red Rocks in Wellington with Sam Hunt to photograph the seals which would later be featured in this ‘School Journal’.

The image of the house was created for the cover of a School Bulletin, ‘Southland’, from 1972.